


Antebellum

by Macremae



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Freeform, M/M, Wakes & Funerals, eulogy, hilbert finally gets the damn funeral he deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 06:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12316059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae
Summary: He loved him, he loved him, he loved him, and now he's gone forever.





	Antebellum

Eiffel is still there when the last of the mourners trek out of the observation deck.

He stares at the empty space on the ground, void of bodies to mourn. The grey, dull floor isn’t especially interesting, but neither is anyplace else at the moment. 

He sighs, and folds a hand over his chest, wrapping his fingers around his other arm. The station feels so large today, empty and echoing with too many ghosts. Their crew was so small, even with the new arrivals, but with two more gone, it feels almost unnoticeable. The station creaks ominously, but the noise has become so familiar in the last few years, Eiffel barely registers it. 

His mind conjures up a sleeping Hilbert, arms folded gently across his chest, dressed in his station uniform and lab coat. His eyes are closed, at peace for perhaps the first time ever, and his mouth is turned down in a small frown. There is no blood, no bits of matter and gore. Just a clean, floating body with no heartbeat left.

It’s disgusting.

Hilbert wasn’t supposed to die. Hilbert was supposed to live forever, like some ingenious little cockroach that always stayed one step ahead of the end of the world. Sure, they’d have shipped his ass right to prison if- _when_ they got home, but extenuating circumstances be damned. He should have at least seen the sun again.

He should have at least gotten to mourn his sister.

And there’s that word again: mourn. Jacobi is mourning Maxwell. Minkowski, him, and Hera all mourned Lovelace, if only for a little while. The original Hephaestus crew mourned the Blessed Eternal, in a strange act of camaraderie towards their past.

But no one on this station is going to mourn Hilbert. That is abundantly clear.

Eiffel sighs and runs a hand through his hair. When did it all get so complicated? They were just trying to survive. All any of them wanted to do was go home. Yet the more they tried, it seemed, the fewer would have that chance.

Was Earth home anymore? With it’s prisons and martials and empty apartments paid for by dead-end jobs? With broken houses and daughters who can’t hear you, and the pain will never stop, Doug, because you know it, and it’s all your damn fault? Grass was green and the sky was blue, but was any of that his home?

Or was it here, now? With Minkowski, the closest thing he’s ever had to a mother and teacher? With Hera, his partner in crime and best friend in the whole world? With Lovelace, the woman who showed him exactly how much his past could mean to him if he wanted it to? With Hilbert… who is now dead?

Eiffel told himself he was going home and set his ramshackle pod on a course to Earth. The Urania told him he was going home and brought him right back to where he started.

To whom he started with.

And maybe that was it, wasn’t it? Maybe home wasn’t the house you bought, or the city you lived in, or the death trap of a spaceship you’d probably rot in for the rest of your days. Maybe it was the place you found in the people you loved, and the hole in your heart you saved for them.

Eiffel blinks the building tears out of his eyes as he tries to burn a hole in the ground with them. His chest aches. With a deep breath, he shakily clasps his hands behind his back.

“Alexander Hilbert was a monster,” he says, “and I stand by that. He was a murderer and a turncoat, and he killed a lot of people. Innocent people.”

He takes another breath. “But we’re not here to talk about him. Because he’s not the one who died. That honor belongs to a different man.” There is a pause, and then, “Dmitri Ilyich Volodin.

“I don’t know a lot about Dmitri’s past. He was born God-knows-when in God-knows-where, Russia, and lived during the dying days of the USSR and the Cold War- I think. For all I know, the guy might be a Highlander. Who’s to say? But he had a pretty shitty childhood. No excuse for the things he did, of course, but still.

“He was smart, too. Like, really smart. Like, ‘smarter than any of us will ever be’ smart. And the crazy thing is, he didn’t want to take over the world or destroy all of humanity, of have any kind of power at all. He just wanted to help people. He put all of his life’s work into making a virus that would cure people- of anything! It would have helped billions of people save billions more. Hell, I think it might’ve even saved me.

“But that was the thing about Dmitri. He could see the big picture, yeah, but not the pieces. He couldn’t see the lives he hurt and affected in his race to save others. Decima was a great idea with a great cause, but the way it got there was horrible and tragic. It might have been worth the cost; we’ll never know. What we do know is that people are dead because of it. That Dmitri was sorry for the lives he took, but not for the progress they made.

“So let’s talk about something better, huh? Let’s talk about him. Dmitri had, like, the world’s worst self-care habits. He’d stay up for days working, down six cups of coffee, then pass out covered in bootleg Kaiju goo. _Then_ , he’d wake up three hours later and just get right back to it without blinking. 

“He had a sweet tooth, too. He loved astronaut ice cream; one time I caught him eating whole pack of it in the mess hall. His hair was almost always pulled back, but on the really, and I mean _really_ rare occasion it was down, the whole thing floated up around his head like a little black raincloud. Dmitri made dark jokes and hated puns. He loved his sister and missed her like crazy. He truly thought that what he was doing would save the world. He was a person, a _human being_ , and while he wasn’t a saint, we can’t take that away from him.”

Eiffel lets out a long, steady sigh. His hands have stopped shaking now, and his whole body feels drained of tension and energy. He musses his hair again.

“So- here’s to Dmitri Volodin, I guess. Here’s to the kid that never got what he deserved, and the the man that got much more. To the person I…” Eiffel tries, but the words won’t come out. They’re stuck in his throat, crowding it so he can’t breathe. His heart is choking him.

A beat.

“Who I loved.”

Eiffel doesn’t cry; there will be time for that later. Before he leaves, however, there’s one last thing he needs to do. 

He reaches into his jumpsuit pocket and carefully pulls out something. It’s been dead for a while, but up here, you take what you can get. Blessie wouldn’t mind, anyway. He handles it carefully, laying it down in the middle of the room. 

Then, he walks out, leaving the star-shadowed form of the flower behind him.


End file.
